To Save the West

What will save the West is the death of the metromale, God willing. Islamic men have much to teach us and we have much to learn.

Shocked? Let me clarify: about Islamic men, we have nothing to learn from their shame/honor based identities lodged firmly in the primitive sacred, no. Rather, the marked differentiation of male and female roles, a passion for ritual that honors our Creator and concomitantly builds a unity among men, and a love of learning wisdom from the written word. That their a priori presuppositions differ greatly from those of our Catholic world view and theology does not abjure our appreciation of these values, nor keep us from admiring them and plundering them for our use in Marian chivalry.

Indeed, western metromales have become all too much at one with men of the Scimitar except for these fine qualities: honor and shame oriented, remote from disinterested self-sacrifice for the greater good of the commonweal, noncommittal, on the make, hoarders of pleasure moments, self-grandizers, trusters of Mammon, secret self-loathers, grabbers after false transcendence, ontologically challenged in the extreme.

The shining alternative - what the West needs in ever-increasing numbers - is chivalric men. This is not a vain effort to regain a "golden age" of Christendom; no. Rather these men know that God's Kingdom and the Catholic Church needs them - who respect the will of God in making us male and female, imago dei; who are humble and ever deferring before others, courteous to women and children (yet as stern in the upbringing of the latter as they are kind and unprovocative), fierce in defense of the weak and outcast. In short, who want to claim all the best of our Christian culture - not dead but dormant.

We claim allegiance to Our Resurrected Lord, reclaiming the best of chivalric fortitude - and justice, prudence, and temperance. We must reject in large part the spirit of the age which for the past few short centuries has tried to carry out the Second Great Commandment of Our Lord while rejecting and ignoring the First. Enlightenment projects - so-called - lie strewn across history's plain one after the other in this proud and vain effort. And yet they continue even today with the sad, silly refrain, "Yes, we can."

Chivalric men of faith must be bound in fealty to Our Lord and the holder of the keys of Saint Peter - Pope's men all: the utter antithesis of the metromale. The West needs men committed to the Church, to their wives and families, to the greater good. Only this will save the West - the reclamation of the code of Marian chivalry.

Consequential Judgment

Just the news to brighten your day.
The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years, according to official research collated for The Times.

The population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics reveals. In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million.

Hughes - PRB

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1861-3) - Arthur Hughes

Would Most Christians Even Notice?

Speaking of model/rival activity, Benjamin Netanyahu predicts Al Queda will try to destroy the Holy Sepulcher.

Would it make a difference to YOU? Why? Why not? Defend your position.

Mighty Fix We're In

I had a series of dreams last night that helped convince me that the Scimitar in the world as we know it at present is nearly unstoppable (don't worry; I'm not sharing the dreams). One reason is that it is structurally identical with what René Girard calls "the primitive sacred." Regardless of one's aptitude and/or predilection to understand mimetic theory (and it seems either like a gift of the Holy Spirit or nearly the same thing - one can't take credit for "getting" MT. I sure don't want to read Bernard Lonergan).

Under the same heading for those with eyes to see, the Scimitar is rife with tribalism, shame culture aspects, and its flip side, honor, so-called.

All of this rumbles tremulously into the reality that Girard deems Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale. And then, of course, there is the worst of all reality: the West's junkie addiction to Middle Eastern (read: Scimitar) petro energy in all its forms. This means we get to pay for our sworn enemies' terrorism and the education-of-hatred of their prolifically produced young with our own "drug" money.

With this burr under my saddle, I asked author, lecturer, friend and mentor Gil Bailie why there was so much ostensible silence from Girardians regarding these disturbing developments.

He answered, kindly. But I suppose I am realizing (hence, the dreams) that merely thematizing the dilemma of our "doubling rivalry" with the Scimitar will neither remove our concomitant sin in the West (which resembles in all ways the shame, tribalism, mammon addiction, honor worshiping of the Scimitar) nor provide entrée for the Holy Spirit into the hearts of millions of those who live and move and have their being under the Scimitar's deity, such as he is.

So, what's to do? Perhaps I am sounding less and less a proponent of legitimate defense and more one of monasticism, but Eliot's prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action sounds pretty good to me. If you have a better idea, please let me know.

... To Kill Her Baby

Actor Gary Graham comes to himself in a far country - after paying for three abortions - and says the following: [ht: Curt Jester]

I’m going to say it. I’m going to say what millions know in the front of their brains, and many, many more millions know in the depths of their hearts…but won’t allow themselves to think it, much less feel it. And believe me, I know I’ll be hated for saying it, I’ll be hated by people who don’t know me, have never worked with me, have never golfed with me, had a drink with me, shot the shit with me. They’ve never met me, don’t want to meet me…but they will hate me. I’m going to say it anyway: Abortion is murder.

[ ... ]

Try this exercise: Every time you hear someone use the phrase “…a woman’s right to choose…” mentally complete the phrase with the following words – “…to kill her baby.” That’s what the argument’s about. A woman’s right to kill her baby.

In the extreme cases of incest…rape…severe birth defects. Hey, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. That’s a tough one. But there has got to be a better way than abortion. Adoption comes to mind. With all the thousands of couples out there unable to make a baby…doesn’t it seem the right thing to do…to give birth and give the unwanted baby up for adoption into a loving family?

Just a thought.

I saw my daughter’s ultrasound when she was at four weeks. All I saw was this little pulsating cylinder about the size of my little fingernail. Each little vibration was a heartbeat. Yes, a heart barely formed; cells still differentiating into form and function…but her little heart was just wailing away. I burst into tears. And I realized… I was beholding an utter miracle. The miracle of life. And I also realized that from the very first merger of cell into cell, and the first divisions…that the whole miracle of life was from that point on struggling against all odds to become a fully-realised human being.

I don’t mean to preach. I’m just telling you what I have come to know, and that I know that I know. The unborn fetus is a baby in development…and to end that life prematurely is to murder that life.

I truly wish that I had had this conviction way back when…when I was only concerned about my selfish convenience of the day. But I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconvenient to think about it.

How ironic that the ‘Love’ Generation should spawn such a culturally accepted abomination as abortion.

May God have mercy on us all.

Read all of Graham's Flashpoint! A Woman’s Right to Choose.

South Rose - Chartres

South Rose Window

Chartres Cathedral
The Glorification of Christ

Lies and Luciferian Logic

Make up your (luciferian logic-filled) minds.

Landen - Clairvoyant Justice

Thomas Landen at The Brussels Journal writes,

“If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech,” Pat Condell, a British stand-up comedian, says in a youtube video released earlier this week. Mr. Condell, though a comedian by profession, is not joking. He knows how two years ago a British television crew which went undercover in British mosques and taped sermons inciting to violence against non-Muslims, was itself charged by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for “stirring up racial hatred” against Muslims, while the preachers were left undisturbed. According to the police and the public prosecutor the words of the preachers had been “taken out of context,” while the “context” of the makers of the television program was filled in by their accusers: their aim was said to be to stir up anti-Muslim feelings among the public.

Prosecutors and judges are no longer interested in what actually and objectively happened. Instead they focus on the intentions which they claim motivated those who acted. No longer is Lady Justice blind to anything except the facts; she is blind to the facts, but claims to be a clairvoyant about everything else.

Hate Crimes: The Importance of Lady Justice's Blindfold

Madden - The Inquisition

Thomas Madden, editor of the fine The New Concise History of the Crusades, writes

Because it was both professional and efficient, the Spanish Inquisition kept very good records.

These documents are a goldmine for modern historians who have plunged greedily into them. Thus far, the fruits of that research have made one thing abundantly clear -- the myth of the Spanish Inquisition has nothing at all to do with the real thing.

The scene is a plain-looking room with a door to the left. A pleasant young man, pestered by tedious and irrelevant questions, exclaims in a frustrated tone, "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition." Suddenly the door bursts open to reveal Cardinal Ximinez flanked by Cardinal Fang and Cardinal Biggles. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Ximinez shouts. "Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.... Our four...no.... Amongst our weapons...amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again."

Anyone not living under a rock for the past 30 years will likely recognize this famous scene from Monty Python's Flying Circus. In these sketches three scarlet-clad, inept inquisitors torture their victims with such instruments as pillows and comfy chairs. The whole thing is funny because the audience knows full well that the Spanish Inquisition was neither inept nor comfortable, but ruthless, intolerant, and deadly. One need not have read Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum to have heard of the dark dungeons, sadistic churchmen, and excruciating tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. The rack, the iron maiden, the bonfires on which the Catholic Church dumped its enemies by the millions: These are all familiar icons of the Spanish Inquisition set firmly into our culture.

This image of the Spanish Inquisition is a useful one for those who have little love for the Catholic Church. Anyone wishing to beat the Church about the head and shoulders will not tarry long before grabbing two favorite clubs: the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. I have dealt with the Crusades in a previous issue of Crisis (see "The Real History of the Crusades," April 2002). Now on to the other club ...

Read all of The Truth About the Spanish Inquisition

Bailie - Prophet for Today

With the utmost of my influence I recommend that you get yourself over to the Cornerstone Forum and order Gil Bailie's December Emmaus Road Initiative talk. Besides being a friend and mentor for over a decade, Mr. Bailie provides in this CD an excellent primer on the cultural anthropology of René Girard. He also unmasks the luciferian logic of the spirit of our age, the most recent expressions of the primitive sacred, also known around here as paganism.

Want an example of "luciferian logic?" Try this.

Tolkien on Middle Earth

Not Under a Bushel

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 25, 2009 (Zenit.org).- With the strength of their hope, united Christians can lead humanity to peace, says a Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, reflected in his weekly television program, Octava Dies, on today's theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: "Christian Proclamation of Hope in a World of Separation." Today is the final day of the week of prayer.

The spokesman said the theme "expresses with great power the precious service that Christians, together, can offer humanity."

Read all of United Christianity Seen as Way to Peace.

Marian Chivalry

Though we be slight and not powerful in the world's eyes, that is no reason not to practice Marian chivalry. I'm sure Tolkien would agree wholeheartedly. Join us!

Waterhouse - PRB

Fair Rosamund (1917) - John William Waterhouse

Eyes on Netherlands - P. Condell

Born Blithe?

Not so fast. And, in the Catholic realm there is John Heard, Dreadnought.

MacJesuits?

Read Deacon Greg Kandra's Is Mac Catholic? (Read esp. Umberto Eco's embedded essay, The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS)

Now a stroll down Amnesia Lane with a youthful Steve Jobs:

MSM - Blinders On

The mainstream media - hereafter referred to in this unvarnished history as the MSM - did an outstanding job of utterly ignoring such sights on the streets of Washington, DC on Wednesday as pictured in the above photo. This goes well with the new administration's commitments to the (let's pretend it is Ivy League progressivism, but it is really) neo-pagan, anti-life agenda so de rigueur in this present age. Is it any wonder John Paul II called it the culture of death?

It reminded me of Nixon watching NFL football while protesters marched against the Vietnam war in its arrogance.

Blessedly, the near-majority in the United States whose existential and ontological center is not founded upon whether or not the MSM pays attention to them or not don’t care.

We will continue to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ, the "word made flesh" (Jn 1,14); obey the Ten Commandments as best we can with the help of God's grace; receive sacramental power and substantiation; raise our children to do the same; and pray always (a) for the conversion of sinners and (b) to remain firm in the faith in these dark days of the culture of death.